My tiles are coming off the printer with different lengths on each side. What is going on here??

[DaMegaPrinter]

Hey all, I'll get right to it.

Printing a standard wallpaper job currently, and after printing all 4 panels, my finisher came back with the news we all hate to hear "The panels don't line up"
Typically that's not an issue as even if it does happen, reprocessing the artwork and rotating every other panel seems to take care of it. As I quickly discovered, this was a whole different animal.

The issue here was that each individual tile, had a different length from right-left.
Meaning Tile #1 on the left side (bleed-bleed) measured 113 15/16 and the right side of THE SAME PANEL measured at 113 3/4.

This is being printed on a brand new roll of Dreamscapes Matte 20oz Wallpaper using our Annapurna H3200i LED printer. All feed calibrations for the printer are perfectly dialed in, and Onyx 21 is what I'm using to tile this job, is telling me all are the same size (as well as my GUI).

I could see this being a tension issue, however my roll was very straight, my belt has 0 tracking, and at 20oz- this wallpaper has a very small capacity to stretch. I tried again running minimal tension on the rear, and 0 tension on the front- instead printing the panel flat out onto an oversized piece of cardboard.
Even after running it with no tension other than the vacuum itself, I still have these inconsistencies happening.

I print 10-20 full wallpaper jobs a week, and in my time here I've never seen a tile come off this out of square. If it was under/oversized the same amount, that's easy to fix. But this left/right discrepancy has my brain hurting.

Any advice, tips, tricks, or just comforting words are welcomed and fully appreciated.

 

[myront]

alternate prints 180deg

 

[DaMegaPrinter]

alternate prints 180deg

Tried that, but didn't have any success with my wallpaper profile.

Just gave it yet another go (wasting alot of wallpaper today.... :/ ) and instead of using my go-to, never fail wallpaper profile (which has now failed me) , I used my gator board profile, and switched the media type from a 54" roll to a 54x1000" sheet. Then reprocessed the files, rotated every other panel, and it seems the last 3 panels I printed matched up.
That one was only 3 panels at 115" high, the second part of this job is 5 panels at 130"....... So wish me luck

 

[Jessica S]

We have had an issue simular to yours. Tricks we have tried is: rotating every other tile. Make sure your overlap bleed&trim is consistant with every panel. Also turn off registration if you have that option. Sorry not familar with your printer, but very experienced with Onyx. May want to try to either "manually" create your tiles or allow onyx to automatically do so for you.
Sometimes shit computs differently! Dont under estimate Onyx either- if for some reason you made a change it wouldn't hurt to double check it kept everything at 100%
Good Luck
Dreamscape is beautiful product-However a bitch to work with, just triple check she isnt 'walking' on you

 

[GaSouthpaw]

If you ever figure this out, I'd love to hear how. We had the same trouble with Ultraflex Suede on our Seiko H-74 printers (all five of them)- but only on one particular file. Literally everthing else we ran on it (on any of the printers) would line up spot on, but this one file... it was maddening. Like you, we checked, double-, triple, quadruple, etc. checked the original file, the RIP file, the tiling- on and one. The printers where it kept happening are regularly calibrated, cleaned and maintained daily, and spot checked with every job run on them, and we could never figure out just what the $*#@ was going on. We eventually gave up (rather than continuing to waste time/material on the off chance we'd get a full, six panel set that lined up) and now print all instances of the "problem file" on our HP FB750.
We've since switched to Dreamscape due to other multiple, ongoing issues with Ultraflex. Don't know if we've tried printing that "problem" file on it yet (other things to worry about at the moment), but now I'm curious to see if it was the material.

 

[richsweeney]

Have you tried viewing the file in outline/hairline mode, just to make sure there are no strange artifacts.

 

[mbasch]

We used to have this issue on one of our printer. It turned out to be that the feed bar was not perfectly square to the printer when heavier materials were loaded. It drooped on one end (<64th") Other issue could be that pinch rollers on one side of the printer are slipping. That could be a wear issue or a dirty roller.